For startup talent stung by right sizing, saviours seem to be emerging from within the ecosystem: Alibaba-backed Paytm is the latest to throw a lifeline to technology and product executives, many of whom are hunting for jobs after the restructuring at Snapdeal and the mothballing of Stayzilla.

Early Friday morning, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma tweeted: "Hello, Tech/Product people in Delhi NCR, feeling heat of business restructuring? We welcome you @Paytm and @Paytm-Mall with open arms." Sharma's tweet didn't mention any company, but his offer came amid job losses at the two startups that have significant staff presence in the national capital region (NCR).

A Paytm spokesperson said the company is expanding its e-commerce business, Paytm Mall, and has 250 vacancies. The company that became a household name in the immediate aftermath of demonetisation will fill positions across the hierarchy—from senior managers to vice-presidents.

Hello, Tech/Product ppl in Delhi NCR, feeling heat of business restructuring?We welcome you @Paytm and @PaytmMall with open arms.

"We are recruiting for our marketplace and the bank: Hence, trained and domain experts are welcome. We believe startups have great people and they will fit well in our entrepreneurial culture," the spokesperson said in an email. Earlier, Anjali Jain of EVC Ventures offered jobs through her LinkedIn post: "Snapdeal employees that are being laid off that live in Gurgaon, please contact …"

Gurgaon-based startup OfBusiness, an online marketplace for business-to-business (B2B) commerce, has received over 100 CVs from Snapdeal employees. "They are now going through the normal HR process of hiring," said Bhuvan Gupta, chief technology officer.

Alibaba, the world's largest e-commerce company, has a 40% stake in Paytm and around 3% in Snapdeal. Paytm has spun off the marketplace business into an entity called Paytm E-commerce Pvt. Ltd, which is raising capital from Alibaba and SAIF Partners.

Alibaba is also reportedly leading an investment initiative to raise up to Rs 1,700 crore for the online retail marketplace of Paytm, marking the formal entry of the Chinese major into an industry that will require it to compete with Amazon and India's Flipkart for businesss in Asia's third-largest economy.

Sharma's tweet has also attracted the attention of employees from other failed startups and entrepreneurs themselves.

Manik Khosla, 25, who quit consultancy firm EY to start a restaurant, has reached out to Sharma. "I am an operations and logistics person and any startup definitely has people in the operations role. Therefore, I thought of applying to Paytm," Khosla told ET. He shut his restaurant business 10 days ago.

Trimming Workforce

Several companies in the startup domain are planning to trim their workforce to reduce overheads. The biggest one is NCR-based Snapdeal, where a fresh round of job cuts began this year, a move that could affect about 1,000 employees, ET reported this month.

A sizable chunk of those affected will be in technology and product roles, although exact figures are not available. Separately, homestay startup Stayzilla decided to shut shop this week, adding to the list of firms affected by increasing investor attention on profitability in business models.

"Hiring such talent works in our benefit. The experienced staff will come at a reasonable price and won't ask for a hike over their existing salary," said Sandeep Padoshi, cofounder, WOW Express, a two-year-old logistics startup. "There is talent crunch in the market, especially in tech and core senior management. If such talent is laid off, we will be happy to hire them."

WOW Express handles about 30,000 shipments a day and had raised Rs 15 crore funding in May.

Talent not an issue

Experts said mass layoffs aren't because of talent issues. "These layoffs are due to organisational context such as duplication of roles after mergers, or to cut corporate costs after buying a company," said Thammaiah BN, managing director of Kelly services, an HR consulting company. According to insiders in the startup industry, at least 10,000 people have had to switch jobs in the past 18 months because of mergers, consolidations or closures.

Jappreet Sethi, head of marketing at YoStartups, an HR consulting company for startups, said, "Smaller players get to pick talent during this time, because most layoffs happen across industry at the same time to readjust the cost of revenue." This is not the first time that employees have been greeted with a flurry of offers after losing jobs elsewhere.

Two years ago when Yahoo downsized its operations in Bengaluru, almost 400 engineers were flooded with offers from startups such as Zomato, and relatively smaller firms such as Urban Eye, Pricebaba.com and Minjar.

Deepinder Goyal, founder of Zomato, had tweeted a picture with "Yeah, Who?" in a font and colour similar to the Yahoo logo. "We are (always) hiring," read the caption.